Transhumanism: What Are the Potential Dangers of Living Forever?

Transhumanism is the revolutionary movement awaiting the breakthrough in technologies with which human consciousness and personality will be transferred to machines in order to achieve immortality. This is currently becoming a reality since several technical labs and transhumanists are doing research aimed toward elongating human lives. However, what they do not put into consideration is the potential dangers for people to live forever. One thing for sure is that this will have a huge impact on the important factors of the society, like healthcare, economy, labor, equality, morality, insurance, etc.

There is a great possibility that people will live forever, but miserably. They will undergo centuries of torment. In most countries, people have the right to live; i.e., murder, suicide, etc. are considered as crimes. Therefore, the fact that people will be able to live forever will need to be re-examined. Those who will live forever will not make them invincible because war, disease and depression will still be evident and they will not fully enjoy their long lives. Therefore, will people have the right to end their lives since they will be condemned to centuries of torments?

There will be the need for generational cleansing. In case everybody lives forever, the length difference between one generation and another will have to be large in order to avoid overpopulation and ensure ample generational turnover. People themselves will have to initiate protocols for generational cleansing where they will have to decide on how long a particular generation has to live and then die once the term reaches. In this way, people will play “god” deciding on who should live or who should not.

On top of that, living forever will mean only the rich will be able to acquire amenities and other basic needs, as the technologies behind transhumanism are expensive to develop and maintain. This will bring about socio-economic inequality. The rich will also be able to acquire a lot of wealth and political power, and they will control economic and social institutions. In addition, developed countries will have access to facilities, such as medicines and live-saving protocols as compared to poorer nations.